Parallels and Perpendiculars
by Grac3
Summary: Part ten of the Angel!Verse (but can be read as a stand-alone). The Doctor receives a cry for help via the psychic paper, and drops Amy and Rory off for dinner so he can answer it. Twoshot, with alternative ending. Episode tag: Post-Amy's Choice. See warnings inside.
1. A Promise Made

**A.N.:** This story has a very detailed description of OCD, and what it's really like to have OCD. I wrote it as kind of a way of telling people what it's actually like as a mental disorder, because I get sick and tired of people just thinking that someone who has OCD just likes things to be 'a bit neat'. It's a pretty horrible condition, and I just wanted to show people what it's really like.

**Warnings:** Minor spoilers for The Day of the Doctor, suicidal thoughts in later chapters

**Series summary: **The TARDIS doesn't always take the Doctor where he wants to go, but it always takes him where he needs to go; Time Lords hold a secret behind their backs, and they have a duty to follow.

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 1 – A Promise Made

_64 Tintagel Terrace. Help me. Please._

"What's that, Doctor?"

The Doctor quickly stashed the psychic paper away in his pocket as Amy walked around the TARDIS console to see what he had been looking at.

"Nothing," he lied, flashing her a quick smile as he went back to fiddling with the controls.

It had been a few weeks since he had regenerated and crash-landed in young Amelia Pond's back garden and, although lots had happened to both him and his new companions since then, he was still discovering things about this new personality that he had – and one of the things that he had discovered was that this version of himself was dreadfully good at lying. His last self had never been quite this adept at deceit, especially when it came to fibbing to his companions, and before that he had been lacking in anyone to lie to in the first place.

Nevertheless, he couldn't help but think that the other versions of himself would have been unnerved at the ease with which untruths fell from his new, youthful lips – not that it particularly mattered how they would have felt about it; they were all gone, after all.

Yet his lie had served its purpose, and Amy didn't ask again what it was that he had seen on the psychic paper. Rory sat on the seat by the control panel, watching the two of them silently, and with slightly wary eyes. The nurse didn't seem to fully trust the Doctor yet – not that he blamed him, especially after the disaster that had been Venice and the (literal) nightmare that his dark side had subjected them to just the week before.

Even so, the Doctor was quite warming to Amy's fiancé, and he wanted to find a way to get Rory to like him. So he decided to make up for the first date that he had tried to take them on, and take them somewhere where there would be absolutely no fish vampires – alien or otherwise.

"We're going to a delightful restaurant on the Third Moon of Sholvo," the Doctor declared, pressing buttons with more purpose than he had been the moment before. "The whole satellite was colonised by humanity in the early 78th Century, and was basically turned into a massive food court, sporting cuisine from all over the Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Well, now it's the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire; the Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire kind of collapsed, and it may have been my fault, but that depends on which historians you read, and who reads history anyway? Boring!"

The Doctor made a big show of flicking the final lever to set them off on course for the Third Moon of Sholvo before continuing his monologue.

"Anyway, this particular restaurant is absolutely impossible to get a reservation for. Luckily, I have one. Made it six months in advance some four hundred years ago, although it was possibly – probably – longer than that, and it still needs someone to make it. So you are."

"_We_ are?" Amy asked, walking away from the console and flopping down on the seat next to Rory. "What about you?"

"Reservation's for two; besides, I'm not hungry." The Doctor looked up from the controls and over at the sofa where his two companions were sitting. "Think of it as a second Venice. Without me getting in the way of all the... kissing." He made a disgusted face before turning back to the controls before him.

The Doctor noticed that Rory seemed rather happy at the prospect of him not being there with them, and a small, paranoid part of him felt a little hurt that the nurse didn't want him around. Not that he wanted to be there himself, of course – he had pretty much forsaken relationships since Rose (though he wondered if he would have to keep an eye on that River Song) and he had a psychic paper message to investigate (which he felt would be a lot easier to do if his companions were out of the way).

Yet it was only by the time that the TARDIS was hanging suspended in the Time Vortex over the Third Moon of Sholvo that he realised that neither of them had said anything. He walked slowly around the console and observed them; Amy seemed to be considering the invitation, while Rory was all but ready to leave. It was a moment before Amy nodded, and a wave of relief washed over the two men in the control room.

"Excellent!" the Doctor exclaimed, clapping his hands together before bringing the TARDIS in to land. Amy and Rory rose from the seat and made their way over to the door.

"It's the third restaurant on the right; just look for the one with the biggest queue outside. The reservation's under the name 'Holloway'. Don't ask," the Doctor added, as he disappeared down the stairs to fiddle with the circuitry and his two companions thanked him before leaving to go off and have what was going to be a wonderful dinner.

As soon as he heard the doors to the TARDIS close, he raced back up the stairs again to watch the two of them on the scanner. There was a large hustle and bustle in the street outside as people of all ages and species wandered between the various restaurants. Amy and Rory were easily lost in the crowd, so he waited a few moments until he was absolutely sure that they were out of ear's range of the ship before he entered the coordinates for Tintagel Terrace and followed the message on the psychic paper, wherever it would lead him.

Tintagel Terrace turned out to be a long residential street somewhere in London, and he had landed at night; the darkened sky was ablaze with artificial lights, and somewhere in the distance he believed he could make out the blinking light atop Canary Wharf. Shuddering at the memory of what had happened there, he stepped out into the street and went off in search of Number 64, locking the TARDIS behind him.

The street was rather unremarkable, though extremely busy even in the absence of people; a few of the houses had posters in their windows, advertising things such as dance classes or fetes, while others had ornaments in their front gardens. Yet the houses themselves were fairly similar in style, only distinguishable by the multitude of different colours that they had all been painted on the outside: beiges and pinks and blues and lilacs and yellows and oranges and greens filled the street, bringing colour to the otherwise boring road.

Number 64 was blue: a smaller house than many of the others in the street, though it was the only one with a porch outside. The Doctor walked up to the black front door and rang on the doorbell.

He only had to wait a few moments before the door opened, and he was faced with almost exactly what he had expected to see at an address that he had been called to so desperately.

The door was opened by a woman, in her late twenties or possibly early thirties. Her long brown hair flowed down her back, though it was in desperate need of a brush, framing her thin and pale face that was marred with large purple bags underneath her eyelids and drying tear tracks down her cheeks. Her bright, brown eyes were glistening, and it seemed that she had only just stopped crying – or, at least, had only taken a pause in crying – though any traces of real sadness had been wiped away as her brow was creased in confusion at the sight of his face.

"Good evening," he smiled, but the woman didn't seem to be feeling any better at the prospect of someone who could help her with whatever it was that was bothering her.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice hard and sharp and accusatory. She looked him up and down, and he felt the smile on his face falter.

"Uh…" He cleared his throat awkwardly. He had been expecting the person who had called him to know that she had called him; maybe he had arrived before she had sent the message, or maybe something else entirely was going on. "I'm the Doctor."

The woman's eyes filled with fear at the sound of his name, a terror that he had only known himself whenever he was faced with a Dalek.

"No!" she screamed, slamming the door shut in his face with such force that he physically recoiled from it. He heard the sound of retreating footsteps from inside the house, getting quieter as they got further and further from the front door.

The Doctor decided to forego the doorbell again, instead electing to rap the door knocker a few times before he knelt down and called through the letterbox.

"Are you okay?" he called, not entirely sure exactly how far from the front door she was by this point, or if she would be able to hear him.

"I'm fine!" she insisted, but her tearful voice betrayed the lie. There was a loud, wet sniff before she continued. "Please, just… I'm fine."

The Doctor sighed, shifting from where he was resting on his haunches to sit beside the door, leaning against it while he held the letterbox open with his first two fingers.

"Are you sure?" he asked; she didn't sound that far away, so he felt that he could speak at a merely slightly elevated level and she would still be able to hear him. "You don't sound 'fine'."

"I'm not crazy!" she cried, a desperation so deeply ingrained in her voice that the Doctor's desire to know exactly why he had been called there grew tenfold. "You can't take me away! I won't let you!"

The Doctor was beginning to understand why he had been called there, but it was clear that this woman – whoever she was – had not known that her distress had summoned a Time Lord to her aid. She hadn't sent for help, and she wasn't expecting any to have come. The question remained, however: what exactly did she need help with?

"I'm not going to take you anywhere," the Doctor assured her. "I'm not even a real doctor; my doctorate is purely honorary."

There was a pause, but when the woman finally spoke again, it was clear that she was far more interested in engaging in conversation with him.

"If your doctorate is only honorary, why do you call yourself 'Doctor'?"

The Doctor laughed slightly, looking briefly down at the front step before looking back up to reply to the woman who was now sounding more intrigued than distressed.

"It was a promise I made a long time ago," he explained to her. "And I'm making another one now: I will not take you away, and I believe you when you say that you're not crazy. I just want to help you. Please let me talk with you."

A moment passed in total silence, and the Doctor wondered if she was ever going to reply to him. Then, finally, the sound of footsteps reached his ears, and he heard her getting closer.

Suddenly, the front door opened and he collapsed sideways, landing in a heap beside the woman's feet, his torso inside the house and his legs still out on the front step. His vision was suddenly filled with pyjama-clad legs and slipper-clad feet standing on a plush red carpet – and he knew that it was plush because the side of his face was buried in it.

He rolled over slightly so that he was on his back, looking up at the woman who was now standing over him and looking down at him as she held the front door open with one hand. For a second, she looked merely perplexed; then, she burst out laughing, and her entire face – though it was still flawed with signs of her despair – lit up, and he couldn't help but start laughing himself.

The woman reached down to help him up, taking his hand in hers and hauling him to his feet.

"Thank you," he grinned as their mirth died down and the woman closed the front door again.

The Doctor realised that he was standing in a short hallway that ended with a flight of stairs going up to the first floor. Either side of him were a pair of doors: one leading to a living room complete with a sofa and a television; and the other leading to a chrome kitchen with a linoleum floor and chairs sat around a dining table that all looked as though they had been stolen from a restaurant's outdoor seating – silver, metal and cold.

"You're welcome," the woman nodded, and the Doctor noticed that the brief happiness in her eyes was quickly disappearing, like air being drained from a balloon.

"What's your name?" the Doctor asked, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking on the balls of his feet.

The woman sniggered, reaching up to her temple and scratching at her forehead. "Wow, you're really not here to put me in a straightjacket," she chuckled, dropping her hand back down to her side. "I'm Jo."

The Doctor's hearts both did a double-beat. "Is that short for Josephine?" he asked eagerly, disappointment dropping into his stomach like a lead weight when she shook her head.

"Joanna. Why?"

The Doctor shook his head, waving it away. "I… I knew a Josephine. A long time ago."

"When you made your promise, _Doctor_?" Jo asked, smiling slightly.

The Doctor shook his head slowly. "Not that long ago," he murmured.

Jo nodded in understanding, before swiftly changing subjects.

"Would you like something to drink?" she asked, turning away from him and heading into the kitchen behind her. The Doctor followed.

"I think we both need a cup of tea," he suggested, earning himself an enthusiastic nod from Jo, who reached up to a cupboard above the worktop to retrieve a couple of mugs and begin preparing the best beverage in the entire universe – much better than hyper vodkas, regardless of what Jack Harkness had to say on the matter.

"Please, have a seat," Jo offered, gesturing to one of the six metal chairs seated around the metal kitchen table. The Doctor accepted the offer with a small nod, sitting down on the seat furthest away from the worktop where Jo was preparing the tea.

He took the opportunity to look around the room and study it. It was certainly immaculate, and incredibly ordered: any straight surfaces were arranged so that they were just that, the entire kitchen being filled with parallels and perpendiculars.

He also took note of a strange tapping sound. He wasn't immediately aware of where it was coming from, but he knew that it hadn't been there when they had been standing in the hallway; but then he looked back over at Jo and saw that she was tapping her first two fingers on the side of the worktop after every single task that she performed: once after she had put the tea bag in her tea, once after she had put the tea bag in his tea, and the same with sugar, and the water, and the milk.

He suspected that the tapping had something to do with the reason that she had seemed so upset when he had first arrived, and the reason that he had been called to her in the first place, but when she turned back to him with her hands full of mugs of tea which she placed on the table before them – she took one of the seats opposite him and sat down – he noticed something else about Jo's kitchen which he hadn't been able to see while she had been making the tea, because she had been standing in the way.

There was a line on her kitchen wall, above the worktop and below the cupboards – a jagged line in the plaster: a crack.

And not just any crack: the same crack that he had seen the Weeping Angels fall into at the crash of the Byzantium; the same crack that was in Amelia Pond's bedroom wall – a crack in space and time.


	2. A Promise Kept

**A.N.:** This is not the last chapter! There will be one more, with an alternative ending.

**Warnings:** Suicidal thoughts, major religious reference

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 2 – A Promise Kept

"So," Jo began, tapping on the kitchen table twice with her first two fingers and taking a sip of her tea, "you said you're here to help me?"

"Yes," the Doctor said slowly, admittedly only half-listening to what she was saying; the majority of his concentration was on the crack in her kitchen wall, absolutely identical to the one through which Prisoner Zero had escaped. They really were everywhere.

"How did you know about me, though? Did my family send you? Because whatever they've told you, it's not true!" Jo insisted, tapping twice on the kitchen table and taking another sip of her tea.

"Your family didn't send me," the Doctor replied truthfully, still transfixed by the crack in the wall.

"Then how did you know where to find me?" Jo asked, her voice small and cautious. She tapped twice on the kitchen table with her first two fingers and took a sip of her tea. "How would you know that I needed help?"

The Doctor reached into the pocket on the inside of his jacket, retrieving the psychic paper and showing her the message that had been sent to him that had called him to her address.

"This says that you're a plasterer," Jo informed him, sliding the psychic paper over to him and tapping the table twice with her first two fingers and sipping at her tea.

"What?" he gasped, snatching the psychic paper up and reading that it did, indeed, declare him to be a plasterer. He cursed himself for focusing too closely on the crack; there was clearly something else going on here, something other than the crack that he needed to work out, as Jo tapped the table with her first two fingers and took a sip of her tea.

He shook the psychic paper until the original message that had called him there reappeared, and he showed it to Jo.

Her face fell, becoming a mixture of shock and fear. "That's my handwriting," she murmured, disbelieving. "But I never wrote that." She looked up at the Doctor. "Who _are_ you?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing as she tapped the table twice with her first two fingers and sipped her tea.

"I'm the Doctor," he told her again, tucking the psychic paper back into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"How long has that crack been there?" he asked, gesturing with an inclination of his head to the crack in the wall.

Jo looked around, tapping her fingers on the table and taking a sip of her tea. "I don't know," she shrugged. "A few weeks?"

"It's rather substantial," the Doctor continued, standing up and walking around the table – but not getting too close to it. At a closer inspection, he found that he could no longer harbour doubts of any kind that this was a crack exactly like the one in Amelia's bedroom, and like the one at the crash of the Byzantium. "Did you never get anyone to look at it?" he asked, turning around to see Jo tapping the table twice and drinking her tea.

"Well… no," Jo answered, though she sounded rather unsure of herself. "I guess it never really bothered me that much," she shrugged, tapping twice on the table and sipping her tea.

"Hmm," the Doctor hummed as he looked back over at the crack, wondering how many real plasterers Jo had actually called, and who had been erased from history by getting too close to a crack in space and time. As he was pondering that, he heard a double tap and a sip from behind him.

"Why?" Jo asked, and the Doctor turned back to her. "Do you think it's dangerous? Structurally?"

"Not structurally," he told her.

"What do you mean?" she asked, tapping twice on the table and sipping at her tea.

"Jo, would you believe me if I told you that that crack is a crack in space and time and that if you get too close to it, you will be wiped from existence?"

Jo blinked up at him twice. "No. But you are making me feel better."

The Doctor's eyelids fluttered in confusion. "Am I? This is a serious matter, you shouldn't be feeling better now that you know about it."

"Well, next to you spluttering about cracks in space and time, no one's going to think that _I'm_ crazy," she smiled, tapping twice on the table and sipping at her tea.

"Yes…" the Doctor said slowly, walking back around the table and returning to his seat. "Why do you think you're crazy?"

"I don't think I'm crazy," Jo answered succinctly. "Other people think I'm crazy." She tapped twice on the kitchen table and took a sip of her tea.

While her mug was still raised to her lips, the Doctor reached forward and placed his hand over hers. Her brow furrowed in confusion at what was happening as she lowered her mug back down to the table.

"What are you doing?" she asked quietly, looking down at the Doctor's hand as it covered hers.

"Drink your tea," he told her, and he immediately felt the fingers beneath his hand try to move to tap the table, but he applied more pressure so that they were forced to lay flat against the surface of the table. "Without tapping."

For a moment, Jo seemed to be frozen as she stared down at her hand being held captive beneath the Doctor's, while the other was curled around her steaming mug.

"I can't," she murmured quietly, sadly.

"Why not?" the Doctor asked softly.

Jo took in a sharp breath and pulled at her hand, trying to free it from underneath the Doctor's, but he wouldn't let her move it; he held it in place firmly until she gave up with a small sob. Tears were beginning to form in her eyes as she remained transfixed by her imprisoned hand.

"Please," she sniffed, but the Doctor still didn't take his hand away.

"Jo," he said quietly, trying to catch her gaze. "Jo, look at me."

Jo squeezed her eyes shut and tried to take back her hand again.

"I can't," she repeated, the desperation evident in her voice.

The Doctor sighed and took his hand back. Jo swiftly tapped her first two fingers on the kitchen table and took a large swig of tea. The Doctor noticed that the tapping fingers were shaking now, and she was paling considerably before his very eyes.

"Why do you have to tap twice on the table before you can drink your tea?" he asked softly, once she had placed the mug down on the table. Her gaze was fixed on the flat surface before her. "And when you were making it?"

Jo sat there, frozen, as though she was retreating further and further into herself so that she didn't have to say anything out loud.

When it was clear that Jo wasn't going to emerge from this state that she had shrunk into, the Doctor decided to try a different approach.

He pulled out the psychic paper once more and offered it to Jo. She responded, if only slightly, by loosening her tightened muscles and regarding the psychic paper with hollow eyes.

"This paper is slightly psychic," the Doctor explained. "It says anything the person holding it wants it to say."

"You want to be a plasterer?" she asked, and he could tell that it was meant to be a joke, but the monotone of her voice did nothing to suggest that she felt any true mirth at what she had said.

He offered her a small smile anyway. "I was distracted by the crack in your wall. The reason that your handwriting appeared on the paper is because that's your true desire. You don't have to write it. You just have to think it."

He held out the psychic paper to her, and she reached out for it…

Yet her fingers had not yet touched the corner of the paper when she snatched her hand back with a sharp, short gasp. Whimpering, she began stamping on the floor impatiently. She wanted to take the paper, to tell him what was wrong and ask for help – but there was something stopping her.

"Why can't you tell me what's going on?" he breathed, his impatience rising but he tried to be gentle with her.

"Th-" she spluttered, "thoughts," she gasped, before tapping twice on the kitchen table and sipping at her tea.

The Doctor dropped the psychic paper onto the table and sat back, considering Jo's situation. She didn't think that she was crazy, but felt that others thought she was; she was paranoid that she was going to be taken away in a straightjacket, and she couldn't seek help because her thoughts were stopping her. What kind of thoughts could control her in this way?

"Jo…" he began, leaning forward in his chair, "do you think that something is going to happen to you if you don't tap on the kitchen table?"

Jo sniffed as a tear made its way down her cheek. She said nothing: she merely nodded.

"You know there's no connection between you tapping on the kitchen table and the things that happen to you?"

Again, Jo nodded.

"But that's the worst part," she whispered. "You know that it's nonsense, but at the same time, you don't want to risk it," she whined, tapping the table twice and sipping at her tea.

So this – this was the reason that he had been called to this house: to help a woman who was being bullied by herself. The Doctor had to admit, he had been expecting alien invasions or robots going out of control. This was so domestic – but by no means could he consider it somehow less important. The Doctor had yet to meet someone who was.

Jo took a deep breath as she sat her mug down on the table again. "Tell me about the crack," she said, now sounding much more cheerful than she had the previous moment.

The Doctor was a little confused at the abruptness of the change in subject, but nevertheless obliged to her request.

"It's a crack in space and time," he repeated.

"How did it get there?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," he answered, his tone holding a bite of bitterness at that. "All I know is that if you step or fall through the crack, you are wiped out of existence. You were never born; all the entries that are written about you in the book of time are erased."

"How can you possibly know that?" Jo asked, with a small smile. "If everyone who falls through the crack never existed in the first place, then surely you don't know anyone who has been wiped from existence, because they never existed for you to have known them."

The corner of the Doctor's mouth twitched at that; this Jo was like his Jo, intelligent and witty.

"I'm different," he told her, smirking slightly. "I can remember people who have never existed."

"How?" Jo asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"I have a big blue box that travels in time, and once you've travelled in time, then you've seen more of the timelines than you would have otherwise, and an individual's contribution to those timelines cannot be so easily wiped from your mind when that individual ceases to have ever existed. The mind, after all, is a complex thing."

Jo nodded slowly, pursing her lips. "So…" she began slowly, pushing her chair back so that it scraped against the floor loudly, "if I stopped existing, if I… never existed in the first place, you would still remember me?"

The Doctor's face fell as he realised what she was implying.

"Jo…" he breathed, reaching out to her, but she was already pushing herself to her feet and turning towards the crack. "Jo!" He stood from his seat quickly, sidestepping around the table so that he could stand next to her.

Tears had already begun to fall down Jo's face again, and when she spoke, her voice was broken and cracked.

"I can't do this anymore," she sobbed, shaking her head lightly. "The thoughts, they're just… constant. It takes me half an hour longer than it should to get ready for bed, because I keep having to tap things between each thing that I do. My family thinks that I'm crazy, and I know that I'm a burden on them. Wouldn't it be better for all of us if I had never have happened?"

"No!" the Doctor insisted, though he knew that Jo wouldn't believe him. "I am over nine hundred years old, and I've seen a lot of time and a lot of space, and there is no one I have met who it would be better if they didn't exist. I had the chance to prevent my greatest enemy from ever having existed, and I didn't take it, because some good could still come from their presence in the universe. Jo, please don't do this."

Jo sniffed loudly, turning back to the Doctor. His hearts broke at the pure, unadulterated agony in her eyes. "But what's the point?" she whispered. "I'll still have this." She gestured towards her head. "Why shouldn't I erase myself?"

The Doctor sighed, knowing exactly why she shouldn't erase herself from the story of the universe, but he had no idea if she would believe him.

"Because you are loved," he told her, and she scoffed, just like he thought she would.

"Loved by _whom_?" she asked bitterly. "I already told you, my family thinks I'm crazy-"

"Jo," he interrupted her, placing his hands on her shoulders, "you have to believe me when I say that there are forces more powerful than either of us in the universe; power that looks after all of us. Power that sent me that cry for help to bring me here," he explained, gesturing to the psychic paper sitting on the table. Jo looked over at it, tears still falling down her face.

"But what am I supposed to do?" she asked quietly, looking back up at him.

"Let me help you," he pleaded of her.

"How?" Jo asked, her voice thick with tears.

The Doctor took a deep breath, thinking over everyone he knew and everyone he had met over his long, long life. Surely he must have encountered someone who would be able to help Jo; someone who knew how to fix her obviously broken mind.

"You know my big blue box?" he asked, smirking slightly.

"The one that travels in time?" Jo sniffed, and the Doctor nodded.

"Well, it doesn't just travel in time; that would be rubbish, and rather silly, because you'd have to walk to wherever it was that you wanted to get to, or get a bus, or a train, or-" He stopped talking abruptly when an impatient look crossed Jo's face and he realised that he had been rambling again. He cleared his throat and continued.

"Well, I can take you to someone who can help," he finished.

"Who?"

"Her name's Christine," the Doctor explained, taking Jo's arm in his hand and leading her away from the crack and out through the hallway into the darkened Tintagel Terrace. "She was the psychiatrist of a friend of mine. Well, my friend bit her once, but that was only because she said that I wasn't real!" he laughed, but Jo looked confused. "Apart from that, she's fine, though," the Doctor waved away the last comment, as they reached the TARDIS parked at the end of the street.

Jo looked up at the TARDIS as the Doctor fished in his pocket for the key.

"This is it?" Jo asked sceptically. "This is the box that travels in space and time?"

"Yup," the Doctor nodded gleefully as he found the key in his pocket. He unlocked the door and opened it, pushing it inwards and allowing Jo to see inside to the control room.

The look on her face was priceless.


	3. Alternative Ending

**A.N.:** The start of this chapter is basically a copy of the end of the last chapter, just to illustrate how this one diverges from what happens in the first ending.

**Warnings:** Suicidal thoughts

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 3 – Alternative Ending

"So…" Jo began slowly, pushing her chair back so that it scraped against the floor loudly, "if I stopped existing, if I… never existed in the first place, you would still remember me?"

The Doctor's face fell as he realised what she was implying.

"Jo…" he breathed, reaching out to her, but she was already pushing herself to her feet and turning towards the crack. "Jo!" He stood from his seat quickly, sidestepping around the table so that he could stand next to her.

Tears had already begun to fall down Jo's face again, and when she spoke, her voice was broken and cracked.

"I can't do this anymore," she sobbed, shaking her head lightly. "The thoughts, they're just… constant. It takes me half an hour longer than it should to get ready for bed, because I keep having to tap things between each thing that I do. My family thinks that I'm crazy, and I know that I'm a burden on them. Wouldn't it be better for all of us if I had never have happened?"

"No!" the Doctor insisted, though he knew that Jo wouldn't believe him. "I am over nine hundred years old, and I've seen a lot of time and a lot of space, and there is no one I have met who it would be better if they didn't exist. I had the chance to prevent my greatest enemy from ever having existed, and I didn't take it, because some good could still come from their presence in the universe. Jo, please don't do this."

Jo sniffed loudly, turning back to the Doctor. His hearts broke at the pure, unadulterated agony in her eyes. "But what's the point?" she whispered. "I'll still have this." She gestured towards her head. "Why shouldn't I erase myself?"

The Doctor sighed, knowing exactly why she shouldn't erase herself from the story of the universe, but he had no idea if she would believe him.

"Because you are loved," he told her, and she scoffed, just like he thought she would.

"Loved by _whom_?" she asked bitterly. "I already told you, my family thinks I'm crazy-"

"Jo," he interrupted her, placing his hands on her shoulders, "you have to believe me when I say that there are forces more powerful than either of us in the universe; power that looks after all of us. Power that sent me that cry for help to bring me here," he explained, gesturing to the psychic paper sitting on the table. Jo looked over at it, tears still falling down her face. Her eyes were distant as she turned back to him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, as she backed slowly out of his grip and raised her right hand.

"Jo," the Doctor snapped, as her fingers got closer and closer to the crack in the wall. "Jo, please! No! No, no, no, no, no!"

Jo's fingertips touched the crack, and it opened: blinding white light filled the kitchen for a brief moment, and when the light died down, Jo was no longer there – Jo had never been there.

"No!" the Doctor cried, reaching up to his hair and burying his fingers into the long locks on the top of his head, pulling at the roots until it hurt. He turned away from the crack, unable to look at it anymore as he stamped his foot angrily on the kitchen floor and mourned for yet another person in this universe whom he had failed.

The Doctor wasn't sure how long he stayed in the kitchen of a woman who had now never existed. He lost track of the relative time that he spent in there, staring into space or glaring at the crack in the wall that had erased Jo from the universe or shooting his sonic screwdriver at it in a hopeless attempt to bring her back.

All he knew was that, eventually, he grew tired of being surrounded by the same four walls, and he left, walking passed the coloured houses of Tintagel Terrace and towards the TARDIS, so he could go back to the Third Moon of Sholvo to pick up Amy and Rory.

When he arrived at the moon – all external signs of his dreadful encounter hidden away so that he appeared as his usual, bouncing and happy self without either of his companions suspecting a thing – he found himself faced with a rather angry, if incredibly well-fed, engaged couple. Apparently he had left them for longer than it took to finish a meal at the restaurant he had sent them to, and they had had to spend four hours wandering around a planet that offered no entertainment other than eating.

So, to placate them, he took them on another adventure – only to lose Rory in an even worse way than the way that he had lost Jo.

Yet, as Amy still remembered all of the adventures that they had had (including the ones with Rory, though she now remembered them happening without Rory being there at all), the Doctor could not mourn the nurse. Instead, he took Amy to see Vincent van Gogh and Space Florida and many other places besides, until he ended up being reunited with Rory in early British history – only this time he was a Roman, rather than a nurse.

It was then that they truly solved the mystery of the cracks and were able to reboot the universe using the Pandorica so that the cracks in the universe would close. It would take the Doctor erasing himself from the universe, but why shouldn't he take the place of all those who had fallen through the cracks before him?

He certainly hadn't been expecting to wake up again, in the TARDIS, all set and ready to attend his companions' nuptials. It would seem that the girl who had waited for him all night in her back garden had remembered him after all, and now, because of her, he was back in the universe.

So he went to Amy and Rory's wedding, and danced with all the women – the men didn't want to dance with him, for some reason he couldn't quite understand – and then whisked the happy couple off once more, to fight an Egyptian goddess on the Orient Express. In space.

It was only when they were back in the TARDIS and he was going to take them all off on yet another adventure that he was reminded of the shortcoming he had made all those months before.

The Doctor had been testing his brand new psychic paper – for he had unwittingly left his old psychic paper on Jo's kitchen table – when it slipped out of his hand and disappeared over the side of the railings, down onto the level below.

"I'll get it," Amy – who was nearer to the stairs than the Doctor was – offered.

The Doctor thanked her as she descended the stairs and he went back to checking the controls – they were still in flight, and he didn't want to end up somewhere too dangerous – or too boring. Yet he was called by his companion a moment later, and was forced to look away.

"Doctor, what's this?" Amy asked, calling from the bottom of the stairs.

A surge of panic filled the Doctor: there were all manner of things down there, and Amy could have found anything…

"Don't touch it!" he cried, rushing down the stairs to check what she had found. "Whatever it is, do not touch it!"

But by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he was too late: Amy already had the object in her hands, and was looking down at it as she held it between her fingers.

She turned to him when he walked over to her. "It was stuck to the seat of the swing," she explained, holding it out to him. It was a yellow Post-It Note. "'Jo, I remember you'," she read, as the Doctor took the Post-It Note from her. "What does that mean?"

The Doctor stared in disbelief at the note in his hands. It had been the first thing that he had done when he had got back to the TARDIS after Jo had erased herself from the universe, even before he had gone to collect Amy and Rory from the Third Moon of Sholvo.

He had forgotten about the Post-It Note, even if he hadn't forgotten Jo – he had merely tried to avoid thinking about her in the time that had passed since he had lost her, so as to prevent the feeling of guilt that recalling her brought him. He wondered if she was back now, since he had rebooted the universe. After all, Amy's parents were back – and they'd not existed for years. Surely…

Surely…

"Doctor?" Amy asked, holding out the psychic paper to him.

He was pulled back from his reverie, for a moment transfixed by the psychic paper, before he reached out and took it back, swinging round on his heel and racing up the stairs.

"Rory! Control room!"

The Roman emerged from the depths of the TARDIS a few minutes later, a book in his hand and a confused look on his face. The Doctor was followed by Amy up the stairs, and he began to set the TARDIS on a course to land.

"What's going on?" Rory asked, throwing his book on the sofa and standing next to Amy.

"I'm taking you back to Leadworth," the Doctor explained, earning himself a shocked and disgruntled growl from Amy – Rory, he noticed, didn't make a sound.

"For how long?" Amy demanded, walking up to the console and attempting to follow him around the polygonal control panel, but he was moving too fast.

"About five seconds," the Doctor told her, as they were all thrown to the ground by a violent mid-flight shudder. "I've just remembered that I need to do something, but I promise I'll be back as soon as I've left."

The entire TARDIS crashed into the ground, and the Doctor opened the door from the console, before walking up behind his companions and wrapping an arm around each of their shoulders and walking them towards the door.

He ignored Amy's protestations as he pushed them out into Leadworth, and shut the door behind them. He turned back to the console, clapping and rubbing his hands together.

~{G}~

"Right, I'm on a break," Jo declared, stepping out from behind the counter of Florina's Florist. "I'm just gonna pop to the coffee shop, does anyone want anything?"

"Can I get a frappé?" Sarah asked from somewhere behind a large bouquet of roses that was still in mid-construction.

"Yep," Jo answered her, before turning to Liz. "Anything for you?"

"No, thanks," Liz declined, shaking her head.

"Okay, I'll be back in ten minutes."

Jo retrieved her bag from the hook that she had hung her coat on and made to go down the street to the coffee shop. The street was bustling with people, all milling between the various shops that there were on the small high street to satisfy their hunger for consumption, and so she realised that it was probably a little the fault of both of those involved when she crashed into someone in the middle of the pavement.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I- Doctor?"

Jo's jaw dropped as she looked up at the smiling man standing in front of her. He had floppy hair and bright red braces, a tweed jacket and a bow tie, with a goofy grin plastered across his face.

It was a face that she recognised all too well, because she had met the Doctor before, and it was that moment when she had been having tea with him in her kitchen that her entire life had ceased to make sense. It was as though there were two realities, and two sets of events coexisting side by side from the moment that she had met the Doctor until about a week and a half before; one set of events where she had been living as normal, and one set of events where she hadn't seemed to have been doing anything at all.

She didn't understand how the presence of the two separate realities in her mind could be possible; all she knew for definite was that the time of uncertainty had begun when she had met the Doctor, yet she still felt excited to see him again – as though he could help her in some way. Even the endless thoughts seemed to be easier to manage now that she had seen that he was real and not just a figment of that other, impossible reality where she had seemed to have stopped existing.

"Jo!" he exclaimed happily, grabbing her by the shoulders and air-kissing each of her cheeks twice. "Welcome back to the universe!"

"What do you mean, 'back to the universe'?" she asked, as he drew his hands back from her. "Where have I been?"

"It doesn't matter," he giggled, his smile like that of a Cheshire cat, reaching manically from ear to ear. "You're back, and that is… well, it's just wonderful!"

"I don't understand…" she began, but suddenly, he was gone. She caught a glimpse of him disappearing behind someone else in the crowd in the street as he moved away from her. "Hey!" she called, rushing after him as fast as she could when there were so many people in the way. "Wait!"

Yet she couldn't see any sign of him; she could only forge her way further through the crowd and hope that she could catch up with him at some point down the street.

She was well aware of when she passed the coffee shop, and she would have a lot of explaining to do to Jon if she was late back from her break, but this was far more important than whatever consequence she could possibly face if she spent a few more minutes getting two coffees than was strictly allowed by her contract.

Eventually, the crowd separated, and she saw the Doctor disappear into an alley and into a large, blue police box that was sitting in the middle of the side street.

"Wait! Doctor!" Yet even as she made to follow him down the alley, the air was filled with a loud, wheezing sound, and the box began to disappear before her eyes.

She was left, standing and staring in wonder at the now blank space that, a few seconds before, had contained a police box. Suddenly, she realised that there was something poking her in the stomach; something in her pocket. She reached into it, and found that a card had been placed there that hadn't been there when she had left the florist. She pulled the card out and read what was written on it: it was a business card, for a psychiatrist called Christine Sidereal, and written on the back of the card, in elegant slanted script, were the words, 'She can help'.

Jo looked up from the card and looked around the alley once more, looking for any sign of the Doctor, but finding none – nor was there any sign of the blue box. She looked down at the card once more, a niggling feeling of ignorance gnawing at her.

"Doctor _who_?"

* * *

**UPDATE 28/07/14:** Part eleven of the Angel!Verse, The Doctor's Prayer, is up now.


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